the stores of the 1990s. And I'm 42, so if you're kind of in my neck of the woods, did anyone else beg their parents to let them shop at Gadzooks? Do you all remember this place? I see people might as like, yeah, I see people that are older than me, checking their head, no, they're on the other side of this argument.
Now it was the store for kids who wanted to be different. You want a massive pair of jinkos, that was the place to get them. Can I just say, I'm ready for those to come back, I just want to see somebody else look at that ludicrous willingly. You want them to have, you want to work boots or skate shoes, but what size you need them in.
You want a band t-shirt? They had all the band t-shirts. Ladies, those weird plastic clunky, clear platform heels, they had them all, sidebar, those weren't comfortable, weren't they? It looks like blister city.
Every time I saw that, they all had them. I see, Gadzooks was the store for the kids who didn't fit into dillards. I remember saving up my lawn mowing money for five months to buy a pair of jibot jeans, swearing it was going to change my social standing at South Alexandria Sixth Grade Center and tell you what, the $100 jibot blue jeans in 1991 did not do a thing for me, I was still nerdy. Gadzooks wasn't for the preppy kids, it wasn't for the athletic kids, it was for the different kids.
It was a whole store of things for you to tell everyone that you were different. The only problem was, I think this was the downfall of Gadzooks. The only problem was when everybody starts dressing different, is it still different? No, different for the sake of difference, really isn't that different, is it?
What does it mean to be a difference maker? We've been talking about Jesus and how he was different in the Gospel of Luke for the last several weeks and how his difference invited people back then, and how his difference invites us now into a different world. And today what we're gonna do is, we're gonna have a conversation about Peter, one of the disciples, and how Peter turned into a difference maker, because at the end of the Gospel of Luke, it wasn't looking very good for Peter. We'll kind of jump into the story of Peter in Luke, chapter 22, this is what it says, Simon Simon, that's Peter's Jewish name, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail, and when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.
Later on in that same night, Peter replied, man, I don't know what you're talking about. And just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed. The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter, and then Peter remembered the word, the word had spoken to him. Before the rooster crowed today, you will disown me three times.
And he went outside and wept bitterly. Now that night, Peter started looking like everybody else who ran from Jesus the moment that it got, it started getting tough. But on Easter morning, we see Peter do this, from Luke chapter 24, but they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb.
He saw the strips of women lying by themselves, and he went away wondering to himself what had happened. So we could pick up the story of Peter today in the book of Acts. Luke continues the Jesus story and the story of the church in the book of Acts. It's kind of a two-parter deal there, but instead I want us to go into first Peter, a letter that he wrote years later, to learn about this difference from Peter himself, about how Peter changed, about what Peter trusted in, about how Peter tells us all to truly be different, and in fact, how to rejoice in our difference, and how to stand firm in our difference.
So in first Peter, we find Peter at the end of his life, and in his ministry, he doesn't know that necessarily, but he is in Rome, he is the bishop of this fledgling church in Rome. He's left the Jerusalem church in charge of James, the half brother of Jesus, and Peter and Paul, sometimes enemies, sometimes friends, or the frenemies. We can say that, during Emperor Nero's persecution of the Christians in Rome, both Peter and Paul died. Church tradition tells us that Peter died being crucified upside down, because he said he did not deserve to die like Jesus.
So that's my digression and fun church history stories. But Peter wrote this letter to churches that are scattered, all throughout Asia Minor through modern day Turkey, and these folks were folks that didn't matter. These areas in these regions weren't important, there weren't Roman cities there, these were like people that live back in the sticks. They were Gentile folks, they were Gentile Christians, there was just a lot of things in flux, and we really know a lot of times when we think about persecution in Rome, we think that it happens like inside the college, see them with lions, all that kind of picture there, really, and truly it was in these tiny little backwater areas where they felt the most pressure.
So Peter's whole letter here is asking them the questions, this is what it means to live as a Christian in a foreign world, the whole letter to these people for that. You can read it in just 30 minutes, a short, short letter. But the first one thing that Peter talks about is this, is that distinction is bigger than diversion. To divert things means to say, how can I be different for the sake of being different?
To divert things means, can I find a bigger pair of Genco's than that kid had last week? My friend Danny Bell had a pair of mammoths that we recall they were called, they were 80 inch, like the bottom foot part. You remember they measured those Genco's like men's riches, like it was by inch, like you couldn't find the mammoths and no exendri-gads, you gotta go to the Dallas Skadzooks to get those. That's diversion.
That's saying I'm gonna be different for the sake of being different. Peter talks about distinction though, the distinction is aligning ourselves to something that's truly different. Diversion means to use Christianity to not be like those people that we don't like, those people that we disagree with, those people that we vote different from. Distinction means how do I be like Jesus?
Because that truly is different. Distinction is bigger than diversion. So let's look at three ways that Peter encouraged this to these churches scattered throughout this region. The first thing is this, the beauty of the revealed gospel.
We're gonna read a longer section of 1 Peter, kind of broken up into some chunks here, but this first section about this, the beauty of the revealed gospel. So here Peter, from my 1 Peter chapter one, concerning the salvation, the prophets who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you. And they spoke of the things that have now been told to you by those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.
And even the angels along to look into these things. Peter begins talking about the prophets as men and women from the Old Testament that endured all sorts of things for being different. What Peter tells us is that through all the things they went through, for the messages they had, that they gave for the faith that they built up every single thing, they're mentioning all the complicated names in the Old Testament. All of those things they did was not for them, but for those down the line, for the people that lived after them.
And the sufferings that Jeremiah went through were for you. Isaiah the prophet, all the things that Isaiah went through were for you. They said all these things, they did all these things, knowing the Christ that was to come, but having never experienced it in their life. Think about that because of grace, because of the resurrection and the unification that gives with us the life, death and resurrection Jesus Christ that puts us back in the relationship with the Father.
You have access to his presence more than all of those names you don't want to read when I ask you to read the inscription on Sunday morning. We have something that they did not experience. Peter says it's even the angels along to it. Have you ever thought about that before?
The angels, the created beings. We say angels are pretty important, right? You're more important to them because you can experience grace and forgiveness, that who we are now, that we have things that people long for and their faithfulness was focused on, that much of what was hoped on for thousands and thousands and thousands of years is now available and accessible to us in the grace of Jesus Christ. Talk about our salvation and its root level of salvation.
It means it's how we find and how we discover true safety in life. So we think about that salvation. It's a story of faithfulness for other people who would not get to experience grace like we get to experience right now. No sure waiting on the second coming of Christ for the resurrection of the dead to everything they did to set us up to know Jesus.
We're to be different because others before us practice sacrificial faithfulness for you and I. That our holiness and our presence with Christ is not just for us, but it's for others. This isn't living differently for our benefit, but living differently for the benefit of other people. We might not even be able to meet the people that benefit from our faithfulness and our holiness.
We follow Jesus because others were willing to be different speakers. It's the beauty to reveal gospel. The next thing Peter teaches us is why we take this thing seriously. He goes on in chapter one, therefore with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed in his coming.
As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you have when you live in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do for it is written, be holy because I am holy. Since you call on a father who judges each person's work impartially, live out your time here as foreigners in reverent fear. For you know, there was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed in the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with a precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.
He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. And through him you believe in God who raised him from the dead and glorified him so that your faith and hope are in God. Because it's just be holy because I am holy. It's a direct quotation from Leviticus 1, 45, everyone's favorite book, be holy because I am holy.
It's God inviting us into his difference. Holyness is a language of distinction. It's about being consecrated. Joel Greene said this, consecration is how we define ourselves against the world.
Earlier in the series I quoted David Keniman when he said keep Christianity weird. So how are we setting ourselves apart? Peter talked about this. We live this out in holiness.
Because we do this in holiness, the difference gets easier when we see it in different ways. The first thing we learned is that we're not natives any longer and Mary does not move to Kentucky. I thought, okay, yeah, we're still in the south. Y'all, they don't put sugar in their tea up there.
There was only one restaurant in a major city I could find to find catfish. The cornbread was just, we're not gonna talk about the cornbread. I lived there for five years. I paid taxes, I voted whole nine yards, but I was not a native.
I was a foreign, in fact, there was a town that was one town over from us that was spelled versus sales. It was pronounced versus I. And the reason was after the Civil War, all the locals said, we're gonna start pronouncing our town different so we can tell when you're not from here. I was not a native when I lived there.
We're not natives here in this world. The second thing that we do to embody this distinction is that we live life in reverent fear. We have an awareness of our difference. And it's not something that constricts us but protects us.
A lot of times we hear fear and we assume like scary time. We realize what fear is, it's fears and awareness of the capability of something. Psalm 119 verse 24 says this, right this weekend I'm just kind of blown how to sit back for a while and just think about this. It says this, your statutes are my delight.
They are my counselors. The laws of God, the boundaries you have set, we use the rule language here. They're my counselors. There's the things that teach me things.
There's the things I depend on. They're the things that help me process through that I might not understand about themselves. Your statutes are my delight. They are my counselors.
The difference of God, the difference of God gives us hope. It gives us relief. It gives us comfort. It gives us salvation.
All the things that we are looking for. Distinctions bigger than diversion. The third way that Peter goes into this is where he begins talking about a different power. He says this, now you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth that you have a sincere love for each other.
Love one another deeply from the heart. For you have been born again, not a perishable seed but you have been unperishable through the living and enduring Word of God. For all people are like grass and they're glorious, like the flowers of the field, the grass withers, and the flowers fall, but the Word of the Lord endures forever. And this is the Word that was preached to you.
This is the thing that's been handed down to you, that's been given to you, that's been offered to you. At this point, Peter's doing something, actually it seems like a little bit of a struggle because I've found that we don't often read the Bible like this and when we come to these points, we don't immediately recognize it. But Peter's talking now about things inside of the church, inside of Christian community. In fact, all the Peter's letter is about people inside of the church.
And as he's saying this, what he's talking about is that there is an internal need to understand this. This internal need is to see that love is not just something that's an outward action towards people, but love should be a defining thing inside of the church, inside of the whole community of God. This is where we kind of have to start distinguishing ourself from the way our culture wants its Christianity to function. Our culture here is special, I describe this town as somebody a couple of days ago, is it is the whole in the Bible buckle goes into.
We say things are different. How different are they really? I was in a restaurant a few days ago and I went from worship song, reckless love to some bro country song about how many kids should be hearing. My Christian distinction is just a business decision now in many places.
It's a marketing category. It's like y'all, let's play some Jesus music and we're gonna sell hamburgers and then Jason Elby is gonna come on and say some things too. And we'll appeal to everybody, it'll be great. It talks about difference, but it isn't different.
One of the things that Peter's saying here is the quality of our community will be the quality of our Christianity. The quality of our community will be the quality of our Christianity friends. If our community is trash, we're gonna struggle in the Christian life. If we're trying to follow Jesus without other people, we will be living a stunted version of faith that is lacking power.
Peter says this, now that you've been purified, you have been made holy by God, by leaning into the truth of God, by protecting yourself with the truth of God, by letting the word of God and his statutes be your counselors and your buttress against everything that would try to take you down. Now that you've done these things, now you have a sincere real love. It should be for each other and you should love each other deeply and you should love each other from the heart. Alan Kereter in his book, The Patient Fermint of the Early Church, he talks about how 150 people, three years later became a third of the Roman Empire.
Says this, the Christian assembly was not one of a pallet of social commitments of an urban Roman. It was the center of Christian wise. When we look at our faith as just some identifying characteristic with who we are, you know, we're living in that diversion moment. We're not being distinct.
And just as the prophets message to us and their sacrifice to us as timeless, we will reach a point in our Christian life and our mature Christianity where we realize that we now are responsible for the timelessness of faith, of Christianity and the enduring word of God. That we're saying yes to realizing that we are a stroke in the line of eternal difference. Here's to that which was preached, that which was handed to you. For in every one of us, or sitting here this morning because someone told us about Jesus, do we realize that we can stop that line with ourselves?
It's our difference that creates and maintains this imperishability. It's our faithfulness, the quality of our community, will be the quality of our Christianity. And all of this isn't big enough if it stays with us. So what changed Peter?
Peter changed a lot. What changed Peter? What made this difference begin to shift in him? What can we learn about Peter from these verses that we read right here?
We can see how it is personally worth it to be different. The two things to close up and the home sheet this week, there's copies out in the back table, we publish it online in the week. The home sheet really is about us understanding how we can put ourselves in this path of Peter and where these moments that Peter had and how do we have these same moments in our life? But the first thing that Peter teaches us is this, he took his forgiveness personally.
When we think about taking something personally, it's a bad thing, isn't it? There's many things we can say about Peter. Before Jesus and after Jesus, Peter stayed the same. He was loud.
He was brave. He was brash. Before the resurrection, after the resurrection. Peter had beef with folks, before the resurrection.
We looked at the story of Peter and Paul, their whole friend of me thing. Peter had beef with people after the resurrection. He was not perfect, but he knew he was forgiven. We can actually tell that story and tell it really, really well.
You know, Peter always kept on sticking his foot and his mouth, but he knew he was forgiven. He had taken forgiveness from a concept that existed in his head and moved it to something he knew personally in his heart. And think of the temptation that we read about first thing. I think of the rejection of Jesus that we read about.
I think about how he saw and processed the resurrection and how he understood and processed forgiveness. Peter went up and took it personally. And we don't think about taking forgiveness personally. We know that Jesus died to forgive us of our sins.
And Father Abraham had many sons. We cannot the line off friends. But how much time have we spent personally praying to see and to understand our own need for forgiveness? No one would like to live as forgiven to see these places we've been forgiven, to parade through the continual forgiveness of Jesus and our continual sin.
And how that then affects and influences the way that we consecrate our own personal life every day and how we lean into the Holy Spirit every day and how we take on the power and promise of Jesus Christ to free us from willful sin. This means to take our sin personally. We can identify the Peter moments in our own life. We can take that forgiveness personally.
That's when things begin to change. That's when we say, I don't need that anymore, but I really do need this right now. This is where we begin to have different motivations. We begin to have different hopes in life.
We have to take our forgiveness personally. That's the thing that makes us different makers. The second thing we want from Peter and this is this. The church needs to be different, not just us, but the church needs to be different.
Few weeks back, Jane came up here and gave us all sorts of fun announcements about the food bank. You remember that? You can watch it all. I'm a cook and save it.
I didn't ask her to come do this. So she's gonna stay sit down in her chair but I'll give you a quick recap. We've grown the food pantry until we can't fit it here anymore. Marge right there is now working on making it a 501c three.
We have access to more programs and more food. We've moved the food pantry out of the church and now have multiple churches responsible and sharing an ministry of the food pantry. And how I love this part so much. It's probably going to be called neighbor to neighbor.
Is we keep this mission going to make sure there are no hungry bellies in Starlington. That's amazing, isn't it? That's huge, right? Friends the church of Satan can have a food pantry.
Always means difference. And just doing big things isn't big enough. Eugene Peterson said, as long as we think the church is in competition with the world is a way of outdoing the world, we will never get it. Keep Christianity weird, right?
Being difference makers means us beginning to understand that because of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit that we can do things that no one else can. It is a moral movement. It is a justice movement. It is a movement of the Holy Spirit.
Doing radically supernatural things around us that only happen because of the power of God in our lives. Things happening where the presence of God is so thick, so powerful that nothing else can explain it. Of us as individuals, taking our forgiveness personally and chasing holiness because God is holy chasing difference, because God is difference and He invites us into His difference and we are not satisfied with anything else. Not satisfied with our own power, but continually chasing after His power.
And everything around us begin changing because the presence and power of God dwells with His people who are committing different. Friends, that's the Jesus difference. Friends, that's the life that Jesus began inviting people into 2000 years ago. And He would stop talking all this inscriptures, people were astonished because they never heard anything like this before.
Friends, Jesus is inviting us in that exact same thing. And we are the people that continue to stretch and push this difference out into the world all around us. Our faithfulness keeps this long line of eternal goodness going, but we have to be different to do. Let's pray.
Father, as we come in, we offer ourselves to you. My prayer is that for us to just see this call that existed our life. God to see and experience the power that you invite into us. God of possibility.
God of pray for God for these things that we think are holding us back. God for us to see instead an invitation for you to come and take over. Where we cannot do different things until we have allowed you to come in and make us different. God, so let us not be satisfied with the level of our experience, with you.
God with our personal awareness, before we feel like we've been forgiven enough, God, let us never be satisfied with how much of you lives inside of us. Instead, God, allow us to just fling wide those open doors of our heart. God to know you in a deeper way, be filled with you in a deeper way. And God to go and do those deeper things.
Shall we pray? Amen.